July 12, 2004

Floyd Landis profiled

US Postal's Floyd Landis, who may be jumping teams next year (possibly to Phonak), broke into pro cycling through mountain biking after growing up Mennonite in Pennsylvania.

Now 28, Landis says all his attention is on delivering a 6th Tour victory to team leader Lance Armstrong:

"I'd like to think I can keep improving, but at this point, I'm here to help Lance," Landis told a small group of reporters over the weekend. "I'm not saving anything for me. I'll worry about that a few months from now or next year or whenever.

"If you put a timetable on something, you probably set yourself up for failure. If it happens sooner, that's great, but I'm patient."

His first taste of international competition was at the junior world championships in France, but that was also Landis' first time on a flight and first time on a trip by himself:

"Coming to France was like flying to Mars," Landis said. "It still kind of is."

"Most of the other junior kids over there weren't all that serious. Their parents had been flying them around forever. They were having a good old time and I didn't know what was going on. I couldn't even race. I finished, but barely. I went home just traumatized. I didn't ever want to ride a bicycle again."

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Comments

is the US Postal team being changed to the DISCOVERY team next year? i've heard about how they have just backed the USP team, but it seemed in the blurb re: phonak and landis that the team is switching to be a purely discovery team??

also on a completely different note, is there any website that shows the prize money for each stage + the overall winner? i rembmber seeing it last year somewhere but i checked the pdf file of the rules of the race and i don't think i saw them there.